Philadelphia Eagles Notebook: Special teams lacking spark

PHILADELPHIA — A punt returned for a touchdown. A missed extra point. A timeout mangled because there weren’t 11 players available for a field goal attempt.

Special teams? What was so special about how the Eagles performed in their last game, a 38-23 loss to the Dallas Cowboys?

Too little, admits Eagles special teams coordinator Bobby April.

“The season has been very disappointing because I’ve seen from experience that if you have a dominating special teams — and I mean a dominating special teams — many of the games that we lost we could have won,” April said Thursday at the NovaCare Complex. “You dominate them and a lot of the games we lost we could have won. I believe that. If the games are close, the special teams and turnovers are going to decide the game. And in the NFL the parity is so great.”

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Taking a break from preparing for a Sunday game in Washington, April was quick to absorb the hits for the failures against Dallas.

“There was a lot of coaching things that I could have done better,” he said. “That’s on me. I like our players. I like their talent. It’s really been for me a great group to work with. I just have to help them better to be more prepared for a play like that.”

Pressed, April shared some technical views of the breakdowns. On the flubbed PAT, Alex Henery’s plant foot slipped. On the punt-return touchdown, the Eagles may have been “bunched a little” in the middle. On King Dunlap’s inability to make it onto the field in time for a field-goal try, April had angled away from the sideline for a better view, perhaps compromising the strength of his personnel call.

Mostly, though, he was OK with taking the blame.

“I have my hands on everything,” he said, “in that area.”

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The Eagles have six losses. Often, teams with six losses reach the playoffs.

The Birds, for now, are OK with leaving it at that.

“We’ve been in situations like this before,” Trent Cole said. “And there are other teams sitting like us. Things happen all the time. We’ve been in things before in the past and have managed to get ourselves out of it. So we are going to keep moving forward. We’ll keep doing our job. We’ll keep fighting harder. We’ll keep stepping up to that level. And whatever we can take positive out of every game, we will just keep moving to the next game.”

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As they prepare to face the versatile Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III Sunday, the Eagles have one defensive plan: Discipline.

“He’s a pass-first type of QB,” Kurt Coleman said. “This offense is totally different than any offense that we’ve faced this year. So we will play a very disciplined defense. The way they have their offense going, it is a lot of misdirection. They make you think they are going here, then RG III will go around the back end. It is just that type of offense. And obviously, when you have RG III with the ball, everything revolves around him. We have to be able to match up and be able to make tackles in open space.”

Griffin will force the Eagles to keep their defense simple, almost to the point of having 11 1-on-1 assignments.

“This is going to be a game that, defensively, we are going to have to have a very disciplined type of play,” Cole said. “Everybody’s got to do their job. And we have to do it right away. We can’t try to make somebody else’s play or try to do something extra, because it can hurt us.”

Defensive coordinator Todd Bowles has preached that all week — and likely will be shouting it Sunday.

“You’ve got to be disciplined,” he said. “You’ve got to stay in your gaps and stay in your lanes. And schematically, everybody’s got to be in the same place and be on the same page at the same time.”

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Rookie Vinny Curry is inching — inching — closer to being activated for a regular-season NFL game. At least that’s how Bowles is making it sound.

“I think he’s doing everything he can,” Bowles said. “He’s working hard. He’s hungry. He’s doing a lot of the right things. But you’ve got six other guys that are hungry also and doing the right things.”

The second-round draft choice from Marshall has been scratched for the Eagles’ first nine games.

For the record, the Birds are keeping open their option to play Vick Sunday.

“We’ll see,” offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg said. “Mike has been with (trainer) Rick Burkholder, and I don’t have the exact details about that particular situation there. Nick Foles is preparing to start this football game. Whether that happens or not, I don’t know.”